Reading The Nome King's Shadow in Oz Aloud to My Kids

My kids and I have been rereading Baum's original Oz books, but interspersing chronologically appropriate stories that were written later: we read The Speckled Rose of Oz between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, and "Ozma Sees Herself" between Marvelous Land and Ozma. For the gap between Ozma and Dorothy and the Wizard, we read one of the apocryphal Oz books I've had since I was a kid, The Nome King's Shadow in Oz. This was written by Gilbert M. Sprague, author of the mediocre Patchwork Bride, and illustrated by Donald Abbott, writer/artist of Speckled Rose.

The Nome King's Shadow in Oz by Gilbert M. Sprague
illustrated by Donald Abbott

Published: 1992
Acquired and previously read: late 1990s
Read aloud: July 2026

The beginning of the story overlaps with the end of Ozma: when Ruggedo, the Nome King, is struck with Billina's egg, he falls apart. He pulls himself back together, but doesn't notice his shadow is missing. (Kid One objected that this isn't consistent with how the same scene is depicted in Ozma, and they are right.) The book then follows the shadow, who acquires his own independent existence as "Shady" and decides to travel to Oz to revenge himself upon Billina and the other inhabitants of the Emerald City.

It's a slight story, but it is undoubtedly better than either Patchwork Bride or Speckled Rose. The idea of "shadow hooks," where a shadow connects itself to its host, is a good one; Shady figures out how to use them to detach people's shadows and control them. It's the kind of magical-but-though-through thing that one could imagine L. Frank Baum himself coming up with; the darker tone of the concept with the kind of thing Baum was doing in later Oz books like Magic of Oz. Abbott is a pretty good illustrator who, as in Speckled Rose, is doing a W. W. Denslow pastiche; the highlight is probably seeing him render a bunch of John R. Neill–designed characters in Denslow's style. I particularly liked how he drew Billina... though my kids complained she didn't look like Billina!

Like a lot of Emerald City Press Oz books, it's short, and probably its biggest downfall is that Shady's schemes are pretty pedestrian (messing up the palace laundry and kitchens) and that the resolution of it all is pretty arbitrary and fairly easy. Certainly there are worse apocryphal Oz books, but there are much better Oz books in general. Probably my kids' favorite thing was learning about Billina's kids... but that's something Baum himself came up with, we just haven't got there yet! (I think we will learn about them in Dorothy and the Wizard.)

All that said, I did ask Kid Two who his favorite Oz character was... and he said Shady! So who knows. 

(re)Reading Ozma of Oz Aloud to My Kids

Back when I read this aloud to Kid One, then three years old, I concluded it was one of the better Oz books. Now I've read it aloud again to Kids One and Two, now eight and five, and I stand by that assessment.

Ozma of Oz: A Record of Her Adventures with Dorothy Gale of Kansas, the Yellow Hen, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, Tiktok, the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger; Besides Other Good People too Numerous to Mention Faithfully Recorded Herein by L. Frank Baum
illustrated by John R. Neill

Originally published: 1906
Acquired and previously read: August 2021
Read aloud: May–June 2026

As I prepped this review, I skimmed some of the reviews on LibraryThing, and I was struck by one that noted, "As much I enjoy the story... at no point in the story do I ever worry about Dorothy, because she never worries.... [C]onsidering the almost continuous stream of dicey situations she gets into, she remains zen and mostly unbothered at all times, which really renders her rather dull. It takes away a lot of the excitement that should be building... I guess this is because it is a children's adventure, and Baum didn't want his readers getting upset, but I always liked a book that could make you cry as well as make you laugh." 

One of the interesting things about reading books aloud to kids is that you become aware of how kids process literature differently to how adults process literature, something you must of course have known at some point in your life, because you were once a kid yourself, but which you've clearly forgotten in the past thirty years. I agree that Baum usually has a very even-keeled tone: note very matter-of-fact way that things like the mutilation of the Tin Woodman or the attack of the wolves are communicated in Wonderful Wizard, something especially revealed by the contrasting choices made in some adaptations. A more modern writer, I suspect, would write sequences like Dorothy floating on the chicken coop in the ocean by telling you how scared Dorothy was, or crank up the suspense of the part where the Oz characters are trying to find the transformed Royal Family of Ev in the Nome King's palace and becoming transformed themselves.

But what I realized from reading this book aloud to a five-year-old is that a five-year-old doesn't need the prose to indicate how scary something is to be scared by it. Poor little guy was snuggling up to me for comfort when Dorothy was floating around on that chicken coop; poor little kid really did not like it when all the members of Ozma's party were being transformed, and I had to reassure him by reminding him that we had read later-set Oz books where Ozma was just fine! Kids, it seems, have an innate ability to just imagine themselves in a situation that adults lack. Kid Two doesn't need Baum to tell him Dorothy is scared because he imagines himself on a chicken coop in a storm in the Pacific Ocean and that is scary!

Kids also appreciate the moments of triumph: the kids loved when Billina hid herself and found out the Nome King's secret, and when she made her guesses—big whoops of delight.

Kid Two is apparently a Jack Pumpkinhead stan; near the end of the book, he complained that he hadn't turned up, and then was quite ecstatic when he appeared in the (what will be obligatory from this point on) end-of-book celebration scene. This was a fun one to read aloud again.

Continuity note: My kids did not remember that Glinda met the Nome King, and he acquired his Magic Belt, in Ages of Oz, even though we only read it five months ago! Oh well.

Reading Issue #3 of Oz-story Aloud to My Kids

As previously discussed here on this blog, I've been rereading some of the early L. Frank Baum Oz books aloud to my kids. So far, we've done The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Marvelous Land. But in between these, we've been working in some later "apocryphal" Oz books based on when they take place. So, for example, we read Donald Abbott's Speckled Rose between the first two because that's when it's set. In between Marvelous Land and Ozma, we read issue #3 of Oz-story Magazine because it contains the story "Ozma Sees Herself" by Edward Einhorn, which is set during that span; I also read the kids a couple other stories from the book I thought they would be interested in, and then read the rest of the book to myself.

Oz-story Magazine, Number Three
edited by David Maxine with Eric Shanower

Anthology published: 1997
Contents originally published: 1901-97
Acquired: May 2026
Read: May–July 2026

"Ozma Sees Herself" is set shortly after Marvelous Land, and concerns something L. Frank Baum himself was resolutely uninterested in: the psychological ramifications of Tip's transformation back into Ozma. It's pretty short, but like all of Einhorn's Oz work, well done. It also introduces Ozma to the Hungry Tiger; I was a bit surprised that Einhorn had the Tiger and the Cowardly Lion know each other from before Dorothy met the Lion, because I personally am a fan of the interpretation that the Tiger we see in Wonderful Wizard when the animals beg the Lion to kill the giant spider is the Hungry Tiger. But that's a quibble: the idea that Ozma sees a beautiful nymph and comes to recognize it as herself is a clever one.

The book also contains three installments from W. W. Denslow's newspaper strip that featured the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman. (Denslow and Baum shared copyright on the first book, and each made their own attempts to capitalize on the success of the stageplay adaptation of it; for Baum, that was Marvelous Land and its own stageplay adaptation, while for Denslow, it was a series of short stories he wrote and illustrated himself.) Denslow is an amazing illustrator, of course, but his writing does not really hit the tone of an Oz story. His work actually reminds me a lot of the next Oz-illustrator-turned-writer, John R. Neill—basically anything can happen if it gives Denslow an excuse to draw something interesting. For example, in these stories, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman can casually travel to America! Overall, they're pretty harmless and forgettable. If you care about timelines, they probably take place between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, except for the first one, which includes Dorothy. This is about her being sad because it's Christmas and she's away from her family; my understanding is that Oz timeline aficionados place it during Wonderful Wizard, in the segment after the Wizard has left Oz in his balloon, before the characters get the idea to go see Glinda for help. (Hungry Tiger Press later collected all of Denslow's stories in a book called The Scarecrow and the Tin-Man of Oz, which I own but have not read. Maybe someday I'll read it to the kids.)

This volume didn't contain as much kid-friendly material as some other installments of Oz-story; the only other thing I read aloud to the kids was "Spots in Oz" by Rachel Cosgrove Payes, which features the leopard with changing spots named Spots from The Hidden Valley of Oz. It was two years ago that we read this book, and it is honestly pretty forgettable, so Kid One has only a vague memory of Spots, and Kid Two doesn't know it at all. This story isn't much cop either, but it's fine. It also features the Hungry Tiger, so that lined up nicely with "Ozma Sees Herself" and our imminent rereading of Ozma of Oz.

There's some original comics material here, all written by Eric Shanower, with various illustrators (including himself); I particularly enjoyed "Poppies," a one-page conversation between Ozma and Dorothy about the poppies Ozma wears in her hair, with beautiful artwork by Ramona Fradon.

In terms of prose, ones I read to myself included "Buffalo Dream" by Jane Mailander, which was a reprint from an anthology of original sf&f. This is about a strange thing that happened to Oscar Diggs—the man later known as the Wizard—during his time as an itinerant circus performer in Nebraska. It's very different from an Oz story, but I really enjoyed it: a melancholy story about the last of the buffalo, told in the first person. "It was very long ago... and far stranger things have since happened to me." Reading it in this context, it's immediately obvious who the main character is, but it would have been fun to encounter it in the wild. 

There are a couple Baum reprints; the one of "The Glass Dog" from Animal Fairy Tales is fine. This issue's full-length novel is his The Flying Girl, originally published under the pseudonym Edith Van Dyne in 1911. The novel is about a brother and sister; she's seventeen and working as a secretary to help the family make ends meet, he's a recent engineering grad from Cornell who can only find employment in an automobile repair shop, but soon gets swept up in the mania for flying. He develops his own airplane, and the two must navigate the skullduggery of potential investors to support their invention... as you might guess from the title, she ends up being the one to fly it!

I found it a quick and charming read. I was surprised by some of the turns some of the characters take; Baum actually does a decent job avoiding what initially seem like some obvious directions. While Baum's main talent was surely in his fantasies, he was able to turn his hand to other genres quite successfully. In fact, though, I would say the book is clearly science fiction! It is about a new technology, one that's not real at the time the story was written, and the ramifications of it. If this isn't sf, then I don't know what it. 

I should also point out that while there is some surprise at the idea of a "flying girl," there no resistance. I bet if someone remade this book now, there'd be a bunch of misogynists going, "NO FE-MALE IS SUITABLE FOR FLYING!" In fact, we get the exact opposite from one of the characters: "The most successful aviators of the future... are bound to be women. As a rule they are lighter than men, more supple and active, quick of perception and less liable to lose their heads in emergencies. The operation of an aeroplane is, it seems to me, especially fitted to women."

Though, the same character goes on to make this prediction: "The airship of the future will not be a passenger affair... but an individual machine for personal use. They’ll be cheaper than automobiles, and more useful, for they can go direct to their destination in a straight 'airline.' Men will use them to go to business, women to visit town on shopping expeditions or to take an airing for pleasure; but I’m sure they will be built for but one person." Whoops!

Two other things of note. First, there's some discussion of mental illness and domestic abuse that really does not past muster in 2026, and made me very glad I did not elect to read the book aloud to my kids:

"He says that—that you abused his sister," doubtfully remarked the girl.
     "Well, I did," said Cumberford, calmly. "I pounded her two or three times. Once I choked her until it’s a wonder she ever revived."
     "Oh, how dreadful!" exclaimed Orissa, shrinking back.
     "Isn’t it?" he agreed, lighting a cigarette. "Only a brute would lift his hand against a woman. But Burthon's sister—my wife—had a fiendish temper, and her tantrums aroused all the evil in my nature—there's plenty there, I assure you. It was the time I choked her that Burthon had me arrested for cruelty. She had put poison in my coffee and I took the fluid into court with me. Burthon said I was lying and I asked him to drink the coffee to establish his sister’s innocence. But he wouldn’t. Pity, wasn’t it? The judge begged my pardon and said I ought to have choked her a moment longer. But no; I’m glad I didn’t, for she died naturally in the end. My dear daughter, whom I sincerely love, is like her lamented mother, except that I can trust her not to poison me."

Egads, I don't even know what to say about all that.

On the other hand, the "daughter" referred to in that passage, Sybil, very much reads as autistic to my 2026 eyes. Here's her first appearance:

As they went up the path Orissa, anxious to be sociable and to put the stranger at her ease, said brightly: "Don't you think the ride out here is beautiful?"
     "Yes," responded Sybil.
     "The orange groves are so attractive, just now," continued Orissa.
     There was no response.
     "I hope you enjoyed it, so you will be tempted to come again," resumed the little hostess.
     Miss Cumberford said nothing. Her father, a step in advance, remarked over his shoulder: "My daughter seldom wastes words. If you wish her to speak you must address to her a direct question; then she will answer it or not, as she pleases. It's her way, and you'll have to overlook it."

As the father of an autistic kid, this could be describing their approach to social interaction to a T!

Anyway, I was pretty into this. The sequel, The Flying Girl and Her Chum, was reprinted on its own by Hungry Tiger Press, so I'll probably end up picking it up at some point. (I gather the first book had minimal illustrations; it's been reillustrated here by Eric Shanower.) 

(re)Reading The Marvelous Land of Oz Aloud to My Kids

As I have mentioned previously, I have begun rereading some of the Oz books aloud to my kids. For Kid One (age 7), it's been almost five years since we read the early ones; for Kid Two (age 5), they haven't heard them at all.

One of the interesting things about reading the books aloud was how it cause me to see many of them in a different light based on Kid One's enjoyment of them, what they responded to—as well as what I responded to, when I was reading aloud instead of reading silently. Rereading is also interesting in this regard, because when I first read The Marvelous Land of Oz aloud,* I was reading it to a three-year-old, and now I'm reading it to two much older kids. So I've gone from reevaluating the books to rereevaluating them!

The Marvelous Land of Oz: Being an account of the further adventures of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman and also the strange experiences of the Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, Jack Pumpkinhead, the Animated Saw-Horse, and the Gump; the story being A Sequel to The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
illustrated by John R. Neill

Originally published: 1904
Acquired: July 2021
Previously read: August 2021
Read aloud: April–May 2026

So last time around, I complained about this one a lot: "I feel as though Baum was attempting to recapture the magic of the original book's Scarecrow–Tin Woodman–Cowardly Lion trio, but failing. [...] Tip occasionally has good ideas, but the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman are pretty useless; and new characters Jack Pumpkinhead and Woggle-Bug pretty much contribute nothing at all. Plus everyone becomes mean and is constantly sniping at each other!" But this bothered me a lot less this time around because I think my kids can appreciate funny banter at ages 5 and 7 that a kid aged 3 cannot. They thought Jack Pumpkinhead's constant fretting about ways he might die was funny; Kid One told me they really liked my Woggle-Bug voice; both kids had an appreciation for the Woggle-Bug's really terrible puns (particular highlights: the "squash" one, all the jokes about the Scarecrow being filled with money). All of this had gone over the head of Kid One five years ago.

Even though it has been a long time since we read this book, Kid One is familiar with the origins of Ozma from adaptations and such; Kid Two, however, did not know the true identity of Tip. (It was a feature of Paradox in Oz, but that was a long time ago for him, and probably all went over his head in any case.) So I put Kid One under strict instructions not to hint to Kid Two what was going to happen... and thankfully they listened! This paid off when it was revealed who Tip really was. Kid Two's mouth was literally agape! But there was a downside, too; when we finished the book, Kid Two was sad: "But I want there to be more books about Tip!"

Continuity note:
One of the fun upsides of having recently read the Ages of Oz prequels aloud to the kids is when they pick up on connections; Kid One was very excited when Glinda's lie-detecting pearl showed up in this book, which she acquired as a kid in A Dark Descent.

* I always think of this book as The Marvellous Land of Oz, though, because as a kid the copy I owned was a Puffin Classic, which used UK spellings. 

Reading The Speckled Rose of Oz Aloud to My Kids

"The Early Days of Oz" was a series of books from Books of Wonder back in the 1990s, all written and illustrated by Donald Abbott, chronicling, well, what it says in the title. There were six, two of them being prequels to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and the other four set in the gap between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, when the Scarecrow ruled the Emerald City. I assume this was all mostly because Abbott's illustrative style (at least in these books) is very imitative of W. W. Denslow. As a kid, I owned the two prequels, but just one of the interquels, The Speckled Rose of Oz. I am not motivated to pick up the other interquels (Magic Chest, Father Goose, and Amber Flute), but I was willing to read the one I already owned to my kids in the gap where it takes place.

The Speckled Rose of Oz
by Donald Abbott

Published: 1995
Acquired and previously read: late 1990s
Read aloud: April 2026

Rereading it, I feel validated in this decision because it is, quite frankly, awful. There are probably some ingredients here for a good Oz adventure, but the plot is terribly constructed. At its beginning, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion are judging a flower competition. (Abbott always calls the latter simply "Lion" because he's no longer "cowardly," which I guess makes sense, but is not really consistent with any of the following books.) One of the entrants is Sir Gyle, who turns out to be the brother of the Wicked Witches of East and West out for revenge, and who attempts to assassinate the Scarecrow wirh a fire-breathing flower. Then all the flowers of Oz begin to disappear, because of an evil living tree called Poison Oak. You might think these two things are linked... but no, it's a complete coincidence! The three friends of Dorothy travel to stop Poison Oak, secretly being harassed by Sir Gyle. On their way, they bump into Lady Minerva Moonstruck, the daughter of the Old Man in the Moon, who is searching for her missing husband. When they find Poison Oak, they defeat him quite easily, but then his pet spider turns out to be Lady Minerva's husband, who also wants to take over Oz... but don't worry, they don't need to do anything interesting or clever, because she turns up and recaptures her errant husband. The threesome then has to go back and defeat Sir Gyle.

None of it is interesting or clever. I did like the idea of Sir Gyle (I'm always down for peeks into the lore of the wicked witches), but reading it right after Wonderful Wizard, where this trio is clever, kind, and brave when they have to do things, the contrast here is stark, given they mostly bumble their way around and accomplish everything either by accident or with the assistance of Glinda. Abbott is a very sloppy plotter; there's a particularly bad bit where the Lion falls into a chasm, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman go on without him, and the Lion catches up to them a bit later, and we learn that in the same amount of time they walked to Poison Oak's cottage, he landed in an underground river, was carried away by it for miles until it flowed to the surface, and then somehow tracked the other two to the cottage.

At least it's short, and at least the pictures are nice. My kids were, as always I suppose, entertained well enough, but I'm pretty sure a couple days after we'd finished it, had already forgotten its insubstantial happenings.

Continuity note:

At the beginning, Gayelette is mentioned as one of the participants in the flower competition. Gayelette is the sorceress mentioned in Wonderful Wizard as binding the Winged Monkeys to the Golden Cap. She was never mentioned again the Famous Forty, so it's weird to me to imagine her as someone still alive in the present day of Oz, as opposed to being a distant historical figure.

(re)Reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Aloud to My Kids

As I have been reading all these apocryphal Oz books aloud to my kids, my wife keeps commenting that instead of reading them all these mediocre latter-day books, what I really ought to be doing is rereading some of the original ones. Kid Two, after all, was not even born yet when I read the original Baum novels, and even for Kid One, it was so long ago, they barely remember them. I felt like this had some merit—do I really want someone to remember, say, The Patchwork Bride of Oz moreso than Patchwork Girl?

I've been picking the apocryphal Oz books at random from a list I assembled; most recently, that lead me to The Speckled Rose of Oz by Donald Abbott, which takes place during the gap between Wonderful Wizard and Marvelous Land, when the Scarecrow rules the Emerald City. Well, this seemed like a clear enough reason to go back at last: reading a book set in a gap neither of my children recollected seemed pretty pointless! So I decided we'd reread Wonderful Wizard, then do Speckled Rose, then continue on into Marvelous Land.

Even though Kid One had Wonderful Wizard read aloud to them five years ago, they are still fairly familiar with its contents: they've heard the audiobook a couple times, read the Shanower/Young adaptation at least twice, and seen the MGM film. And Kid Two has seen the MGM film as well.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
illustrated by W. W. Denslow

Originally published: 1900
Acquired: January 2011
Previously read: umpteen times
Read aloud: March–April 2026

It was well worth rereading. First off, it's just very good. The book has been often imitated, even (especially?) by Baum himself, but rarely bettered. Maybe it's the nostalgia, but I think the book has a sort of joy and a pleasure in it that has very rarely been captured by other Oz books. The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion are all at the most themselves: each possessing a singular virtue that they don't believe themselves to possess. Oz itself is a land of wonders and marvels, full of unknown dangers and extraordinary beauties. The characters' problem-solving skills are at their most important, because the landscape they move through is full of mysteries, and there are no convenient Magic Belts or wishing pills that can save them. To a degree, anything can happen. But also problems can be solved through the rational application of thought; I think Baum very much gets the pleasure of what China Miéville calls "rationalized alienation": this world works different from ours, but you can figure it out. Things don't differ arbitrarily; if you accept his starting premises of how a living scarecrow or man of tin would work, then what follows on them those ideas makes sense. So there is pleasure to, say, the Scarecrow and company working out how to get the Cowardly Lion out of the deadly poppy field. And this would be hard to get back to in a later book, where these characters are all "celebrities" and have very powerful friends.

Partially, though, I don't think the other books ever could capture what made this one work so well. I am thinking of what Brian W. Aldiss says in The Trillion Year Spree about the difference between the original Dune and its sequels, a difference he said was "perhaps true of most series novels in SF. The first novel derives much of its power from our delight in and discovery of a new environment. The pleasure of future volumes is different in kind. Familiarity and complexity replace the higher satisfaction of revelation" (398).

It was also worth doing because of the increased age of the kids. Unlike on previous reads, I think they got that the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion are intelligent, kind, and brave even before they see the Wizard... though also Kid One insisted that the Wizard must not be a humbug because he did give the threesome what they wanted, so I don't think they totally got how (at least as I think the first book makes clear, though later ones seemingly walked this back a bit) the gifts were nothing more than placebos. What Kid One did grok on this reading was the fact that much of what appears in the Emerald City is not actually green, and that the Wizard is just tricking everyone through the use of the green spectacles.

And of course the illustrations of this one are so good. We usually read a chapter or two before bedtime, and the kids listen in their beds, with me coming to show them any pictures. But the original book (which we of course read in its Books of Wonder facsimile edition) has pictures on almost every page, so I let the kids sit next to me as I read it. 

It was interesting reading the book shortly after the two Ages of Oz books by Gabriel Gale and Lisa Fiedler. Those are prequels to the original series, so I could see some of the connections a bit better... though also the account given by the Winged Monkeys of their history does not agree with what Gale and Fiedler added in in their books!

Reading Issue #2 of Oz-story Aloud to My Kids

Like the first, the second issue of Oz-story Magazine collects a original and reprinted Oz and Oz-adjacent comics and prose stories, edited by Hungry Tiger publisher David Maxine with art direction by Eric Shanower. Like the first, it's a beautiful package, and like the first, I read it some of it aloud to my two children.

Oz-story Magazine, Number Two
edited by David Maxine
art director: Eric Shanower

Anthology published: 1996
Contents originally published: 1905-96
Acquired and read aloud: February 2026

There wasn't as much that was read aloud-able as in the first issue, however. The main star of the volume is the novella "Dorothy and the Mushroom Queen," where Dorothy, the Glass Cat, and Flicker explore a recently discovered underground kingdom of mushroom people. This is credited to "Janet Deschman," but actually the work of Eric Shanower—which I feel like should have been obvious, given Flicker is a character from one of Shanower's Oz comics. It's a well done story of a classic Oz format: the group of weird and antagonistic life-forms our heroes must escape using their wits. (See, especially Dorothy and the Wizard.) The idea that the underground people would think the Glass Cat the most beautiful thing they had ever seen, and that she would be taken in by this, is probably the high point of the story; I love the Glass Cat, and this is a good showcase for her at her best.

The only other story I read aloud to my kids was "Christmas in Pumperdink," one of Ruth Plumly Thompson's pre-Kabumpo Pumperdink short stories. Certainly cute enough.

This issue's complete Oz-adjacent novel is Policeman Bluejay by L. Frank Baum, one of his "Twinkle tales"... but it's the seventh story in a series, and though it stands alone just fine, it seemed I ought to read the previous stories to the kids first. So I skipped it in favor of picking up the complete Twinkle Tales volume, which I'll detail in a future post.

The volume's other prose features didn't strike me as being as kid-friendly, so I just read them to myself. "The Magic Land" by Eloise Jarvis McGraw (illustrated by Lauren Lynn McGraw) is about how Baum came to write the Oz books, which I didn't think my kids would find interesting. I certainly knew they would not be into "Abby" by Eric Shanower, which picks up the adventures of Twink and Tom, the child protagonists of Jack Snow's The Shaggy Man of Oz. (It includes illustrations from Shaggy Man by Frank Kramer.) One, they definitely don't remember Shaggy Man, and two, the story focuses on Twink (now Abby) and Tom as middle-aged adults trying to reconcile their strange childhood experiences with the realities of middle-aged adulthood! This I quite enjoyed; it has a well-done melancholy tone, and it also does some interesting stuff with the concept of Oz-as-reality. Baum and his later imitators often used the conceit that Oz was real, and they were relaying what happened there... but what would it be like to get home to America and for a book about you to be published!? Shanower posits that the kids had no contact with Snow, but the book's prose was all accurate, though the pictures were not. (I felt a little bit of a slam against Kramer here when Abby observes that Kramer drew her differently in different pictures!) Shanower also suggests that while the story was never wrong, it didn't include everything: that Conjo was creepier than he comes across in the book, that there were logistics about bodily functions that were omitted. I liked this a lot; one of the things I always enjoy about Oz books is their methodical, realistic nature within a fantasy framework, and Shanower simply ups the ante on that here for an adult readership. I really liked this story... and I want to know what happened to Tom!

There are also some comics, a mix of old and new; my seven-year-old read these to themself, and I also read the ones that interested me. There's "The Greed Goblin of Oz" (story by Shanower, art by Anna-Maria Cool), a cute story about a goblin who preys on greed but struggles because the Scarecrow has none; a very weird 1946 Mary Marvel comic that includes robots of some Oz characters (it very much seemed to be made up as it went along); the second half of Walt Sprouse's adaption of The Land of Oz; and "Skin Deep" (story by Shanower, art by Archie's Dan Parent), a fun story about an ugly monster seeking transformation.

The very best thing in the whole issue, though, is the back cover: "If Six Great Cartoonists Had Drawn Oz Comics!" Shanower gives us six panels from potential Oz comics, each one in the style of a different artist. I didn't recognize all of them, but we get a Little Nemo pastiche, an Annie pastiche, a Scrooge McDuck pastiche, and so on. The very best of these, though, is the Jack Kirby one, which renders a scene from Ozoplaning with the Wizard in the style of the King. First, Shanower just totally nails the Kirby style in this panel... but moreover, what a genius combination! If ever there was an Oz novel in the Kirby metier of the technological sublime, it surely was the bizarre but propulsive story of Ozoplaning. I would pay real money for an entire adaption of Ozoplaning in Kirby's style, I love the idea so much. At the very least, if Shanower sold a print of just this panel, I would snap it up in a heartbeat.

Reading Ages of Oz: A Dark Descent Aloud to My Kids

The second Ages of Oz book is also the last, though it clearly wasn't intended to be the last, as it ends on a cliffhanger. It picks up right from the end of the first: having defeated the Wicked Witch of the South and liberated the Quadling Country, Glinda and her friends are attacked by the combined forces of the other three Wicked Witches. They fend off that assault, but end up separated: Glinda goes off on her own to learn more about magic from the person who trained her mother, while Locasta and the others go on their own quest to liberate Locasta's brother, who is working for the Wicked Witch of the North.

Gabriel Gale's Ages of Oz: A Dark Descent
by Lisa Fiedler
illustrated by Sebastian Giacobino

Published: 2018
Acquired: December 2025
Read aloud: December 2025–January 2026

I happen to also be watching the Star Wars movies with my kids, and I realized reading this book that it very much takes its structure from The Empire Strikes Back. Glinda has the Luke subplot: splitting off from the others, meeting a seemingly decrepit old person who turns out to be the wise mentor they were seeking, the mentor turns out to have a personal link to them, once their training is done, they must rush off to help their friends who have ended up in danger. And, like I said, the whole thing ends on a cliffhanger, and it's kinda similar to ESB as well, as it's one where someone close to hero is missing and in danger. (Though the circumstances are very different, and the hero does not learn that they are related to any of the villains.)

This isn't a complaint per se, though I feel like once I noticed the similarities they were hard to ignore. Both of the Ages of Oz books have a certain derivative vibe; in addition to the Star Wars parallels, they also comes across as Oz for the Harry Potter generation, with their emphasis on riddles and artifacts and sometimes overly complicated exposition. I found myself wishing the characters were doing things that were actually clever more often, and less figuring out weird riddles with arbitrary answers; I wish also there was more emphasis on the importance but also difficulty of bravery and teamwork here. 

The end is pretty good, though, and I did like the subplot about Locasta's wayward brother.

Even moreso than in the first book, there's a decent amount of that "joining the dots" thing prequels often do. Glinda meets the Nome King, for example, and we find out how he ended up with his Magic Belt. Fiedler does a good job of capturing the personality of Roquat as he was in Ozma of Oz, and we even get an appearance from Kaliko. (Why are the Nomes under Oz, though?) We also find out how the Golden Cap ended up in the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, even though the Winged Monkeys originated in the Gillikin Country (as chronicled in Wonderful Wizard, though there are some inconsistencies with what the King of the Winged Monkeys told Dorothy). 

On the other hand, there are ways the join is not very obvious. Why is Mombi not the Wicked Witch of the North, but some kind of overlord, disembodied Krumbic witch? Assuming that Locasta is indeed the Good Witch of the North, it's not clear how the statement from Dorothy and the Wizard that "a good Witch had conquered Mombi in the North and Glinda the Good had conquered the evil Witch in the South" is going to be fulfilled. And if this book takes place a century before the arrival of the Wizard, why do Glinda and friends defeat the first two Wicked Witches in quick succession, and then the others not at all? If Locasta is the Good Witch of the North, why is she an old lady when Dorothy arrives in Oz, but Glinda just a young woman? These aren't criticisms per se, but it's hard for me to intuit where future installments in this series would have gone, had they happened.

I really don't buy, however, the involvement of a young Nick Chopper in these events. Why, in Wonderful Wizard, did the Tin Woodman never say, "Oh, I used to hang out with Glinda and her family?" And why is Nick's rival for Nimee Amee's affections a musician, and not a soldier?

Overall, this one had some interesting moments but I also think I found it less engaging than A Fiery Friendship. I do continue to wish there was more emphasis on the characters: Shade is still a weird blank, and Ben's commitment to the cause in Oz seems very random, and I want more of the "fiery friendship" between Glinda and Locasta the title of the first book promised us. On the other hand, my kids definitely enjoyed this, and if there were future installments, I would definitely read them. My older kid, in particular, was very disgruntled to learn there was no resolution to the cliffhanger ending forthcoming. Over seven years later, it seems unlikely there will be more... although I guess maybe the rights will have reverted to "Gabriel Gale" and he could maybe self-publish a followup or something.

Reading Ages of Oz: A Fiery Friendship Aloud to My Kids

This book is the first of a two-book series (though clearly intended to be longer) that's a prequel to the original Oz books. I forget how I first heard of it, but I was intrigued enough by what I read about it to add it to my list of apocryphal Oz books I was going to read to my kids.

Gabriel Gale's Ages of Oz: A Fiery Friendship
by Lisa Fiedler
illustrated by Sebastian Giacobino

Published: 2017
Acquired: October 2025
Read aloud: October–December 2025

A Fiery Friendship takes place during the eighteenth century, during the time where Oz was divided into four quadrants, each ruled by one of the wicked witches, who had deposed the rightful king of Oz (here called "King Oz," not Pastoria, as he was in Marvelous Land and Lost King, though this is consistent with what we were told in Dorothy and the Wizard). Glinda is a young girl, living with her mother, about to come of age; what she doesn't know is that her mother is a sorceress and a member of the resistance against the wicked witches, nor does she know that she herself is in possession of magical powers.

The book is apparently the brainchild of "Gabriel Gale" (this is a pseudonym for George Makrinos), but actually written by children's author Lisa Fiedler; unlike most canon-consistent Oz continuations, it was published by a major publisher (Simon & Schuster). Its target age seemingly skews a bit older than the original books; it's more at the level of the early Harry Potters. It was plainly intended as a longer series than it ended up being (I'll discuss that more in my next post), and I wonder if it would have fared better if it had been published now, not 2017, when it could ride Wicked fever. (Seems to me someone should have republished it last year.) 

Prequels are, of course, always a tricky business. If the prequel shows you everything you expected to see in the way you expected to see it, what's the point? But if the prequel doesn't fit what you learned, then why bother? There's a tightrope you need to walk. (I've been showing the Star Wars films to my kids, and it's been interesting to note how the references to Anakin and the Clone Wars don't always exactly work out in retrospect.) In particular, a prequel by other hands can be even more fraught, because it can feel less like an organic extension of what you read before and more like a later author "imposing" their vision on the canon of the earlier one. (I think this happens a lot in, say, Asimov fiction, where people who write prequels like to pin down things Asimov left vague and probably were better left vague.)

Sometimes I think what this book does works, sometimes it does not. I liked the concept, for example, that the Silver Shoes were one of four magical instruments, each originally owned by King Oz but later taken by the wicked witches: Silver Mask, Silver Gauntlets, and Silver Chainmail. I like that Gale/Fiedler delve into what Oz was actually like under the wicked witches, something we've never seen in any other Oz books, and that they give each one a distinct approach and personality. I liked the addition of a "Road of Red Cobbles" as a counterpoint to the "Road of Yellow Bricks"; there's a cute prophecy about a "gale" being the key to restoring normalcy to Oz.

On the other hand, instead of being the Wicked Witch of the North, Mombi is the "krumbic one" (a krumbic witch appeared in Glinda, but what this meant was not really explained), a powerful disembodied spirit that controls the other witches—how we might get from here to Marvelous Land is not really obvious, though I suppose the books might have gotten there eventually had there been more of them. I think what bothered me most was Gale's attempt to impose his own cosmology on the Oz universe, such as calling the land "Lurlia." A young Nick Chopper, half-tin, turns up here, and this felt like somewhat overegging the prequel pudding.

In terms of the actual happenings, the book is okay. Glinda finds out she has a magical destiny, her mother is kidnapped, so she must go on a quest with some other kids to save her: Locasta, a sparky Gillikin; Ben, an American colonist transported to Oz; and Shade, a mysterious sneak. As the title suggests, a focus of the book is supposed to be the friendship between Glinda and Locasta (Locasta is the name Baum used for the Good Witch of the North in the first Oz stageplay but not the actual books), but I didn't find this very effectively handled. Basically they argue a lot but then at the end they are best friends. I don't think either Locasta's sarcastic streak or the eventual "friendship" (by book two, they are supposedly best friends) came across strongly.

I liked the idea of Ben, but to be honest, it's not very clear why he gets so invested in the fate of Oz; I think including a visitor from the "real" world is a classic Oz trope that I wouldn't expect to see in a prequel book, and paralleling the American colonists' fight for independence to that of the Ozites is an eat idea, but we never get scenes from his perspective. Shade is incredibly underdeveloped, and in a weird way; the characters walk back and forth across Oz with her but never just ask her what her deal is!

There are some arresting sequences, especially the "trapestry," which is pretty creepy. I really like the idea of "Illumina," the sword of smarts that Glinda wields. On the other hand, the book is a bit overly reliant on riddles as a plot device; too many times the characters come up with seemingly arbitrary answers to weird problems. I would have liked to have seen a greater emphasis on genuine bravery and courage when it comes to the difficulty of doing what's right. (It seems to me that Glinda throws off an entire childhood of propaganda far too easily.)

There's also too much "lore." In addition to the four silver artifacts, there's four spirits, four gifts, a slew of heroes from Oz past and present, some mild time travel, and lots of visions of the past. It's too much to keep track of, it bogs the story down too often, and most of it is not really relevant to the story we're reading about. I felt like this lost my kids when reading it aloud, even my seven-year-old, who is good about tracking this kind of thing and typically very into it. Overall, they both seemed to enjoy it well enough (they love anything with gems, and there are some magical ones here), though my five-year-old did moan about halfway through it, "Dad, when are we going to read a book where Glinda is a grown up!?"

Being Gaslit by Google Gemini

Sometimes I like to take out my frustrations about generative AI by asking it questions I already know the answer to and seeing how wrong it is. For example, I will ask ChatGPT something like, "Who was the first female scientist in British literature?" and then scoff at it when it makes up a character in a Mary Shelley novel. (The correct answer, I would argue, is Maria Gallilee in Wilkie Collins's Heart and Science.)

Over the years, it's gotten better at these things, though. Indeed, something I've noticed is that if I ask it highly specialized questions I already know the answer to, it often cites my own blog as a source! So just by posting my own thoughts on such questions here, I am helping train generative AI. It's unavoidable, I suppose, but frustrating.

This got me curious, though—given generative AI's tendency to uncritically "read" sources, what would happen if I asked it a question about something I asserted as true on my blog... and for which there were no sources other than my blog? Sometimes in my comic book reviews, I jokingly refer to what I call "Mollmann's Law of Retcons," the idea that what matters when evaluating a retcon is if the new concept is at least as interesting, if not moreso, than the original.

I asked ChatGPT about this; it of course made up something and called it "Mollmann's Law of Retcons."

What I found more interesting, though, was the interaction I had with Google Gemini. Gemini correctly defined the term and cited the blog post it found it in.

But then it went on to say:

It gained traction in online forums as a shorthand for the "Golden Rule" of franchise maintenance. 

Now as far as I know, despite my efforts to make it a "thing" via my blog it has not in fact become a "thing." So I asked who else was using it. It gave me some examples, claiming people used it to evaluate the Bucky Barnes retcon in Captain America comics and the "One More Day" retcon in Spider-Man ones. At the end, it stated:

In fan communities, you will see this law referenced whenever a writer changes a character’s origin. The shorthand often looks like this:

"Does this follow Mollmann's Law?" (Is the new story actually better?)

"This is a Mollmann violation." (You changed the past, but the result is boring/worse.) 

Wow! Quite awesome to learn people out there are using it. Could it give me a citation?

While I previously noted that Mollmann’s Law is "frequently cited" in fan communities, a more precise look at the evidence shows that it is actually a niche critical term rather than a mainstream industry standard.

It told me, though, that people used it on Reddit and Tumblr. Okay, I asked again, could it give me citations? Even of a Reddit post?

Well, no, of course not. And finally it admitted it had been wrong all along. I insulted it, it apologized. In its apology, it said:

Steven Mollmann is a clever critic, but his "Law" is his own invention for his own blog.

Finally, generative AI said something I totally agree with! I told it so, and after waffling on about how smart Steve Mollmann is, it said:

Since you're a fan of his work, are there other specific "laws" or critical frameworks from his blog (or others like it) that you find actually apply well to modern media?

I told it to find some itself. It came up with a couple things I do actually say on my blog sometimes, and a couple others that I think are not very good interpretations of things I say, but most interesting was when it said this:

In a particularly creative deep-dive into the works of L. Frank Baum, Mollmann proposed that later Oz characters (like the Patchwork Girl and the Glass Cat) shouldn't be read as traditional characters, but as art installations.

The Insight: He suggests characters like the Patchwork Girl are essentially "collages" and the Glass Cat is almost "René Magritte-esque." By viewing them as mobile pieces of avant-garde art rather than people with emotional arcs, he makes sense of Baum’s increasingly surrealist and "anti-heroic" later works. 

"Interesting" because not only have I never said this, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing I ever would say! When I asked it for a citation, it cited a post on the Oz blog Burzee... which is most emphatically not by me. It's a collaborative blog; each post is a conversational review of an Oz book by my Internet friend Sarah Crozer and her friend Nick Campbell. I read the post, and pointed out that this idea actually came from Sarah.

It agreed that it had misread the post:

On the blog Burzee, the "Art Installation" theory is actually a collaborative spark between Sarah Crozer and "Nick" (which is the pseudonym Steven Mollmann used on that specific site).

Wait, what? When I asked it why it thought Nick was Steve Mollmann, it told me:

Actually, the identity of "Nick" on the Burzee blog isn’t just a hunch; it’s a verified fact of the "Oz blogosphere."

It dug in, giving a bunch of spurious citations, for example claiming that Sarah and I had presented together at ChLA, or that I was listed in Oz Club event listings. Having done this, it even cast doubt on the existence of my actual cowriter:

Since you’ve caught me on the Sarah Crozer vs. Steven Mollmann quote, would you like to know more about the other major "Nick" on his blog—the one he calls his "co-author" Michael Schuster?

I actually didn't pursue this thread, focusing instead on the supposed convergence between me and Nick. It gave me lots of "evidence," citing the Oz Club blog, citing my C.V., citing my own  blog. We had a lot of back-and-forth about this, with me demanding specific citations for bits of evidence it gave me, and it failing to provide them. Usually, I would ask it a question about where Steve Mollmann had done a thing, and it would give me evidence of Nick Campbell doing that thing, and then tell me that since Nick = Steve, this was proof they were the same person.

No matter how much I poked at it, it continued to insist they were the same person.

Unfortunately, I can't reconstruct the whole conversation because Google decided that it contained "a sensitive query" and everything beyond that point is vanished from the archives. But I do remember the broad strokes. It would say things like, 'Steve Mollmann received his Ph.D. in 2016, and at the same time, in a 2017 blog post, Nick Campbell mentions getting his Ph.D.' I would point out that 2016 and 2017 are not the same time, and it would spin some kind of theory about why the delay.

At one point, it quoted a comment by Nick about growing up in England; I asked it how this proved Nick was Steve if Steve was from America... it told me that Steve Mollmann spent part of his childhood in the UK! I think the conversation I linked to above went on for twice as long as what you see there. It took a long time, but I finally came up with enough contradictions between the lives of Steve and Nick to get it to admit they weren't the same person.

Generative AI being generative AI, though, it can't ever admit it was totally wrong—it shifted to telling me it was just passing on a common fan theory! When I asked it to cite someone propounding that theory, it of course couldn't do that either.

Anyone, anyone who knows how to do research knows how bad generative AI is at it, but I never dreamed it would work so hard to convince me that I didn't understand basic aspects of my own life! 

Reading Issue #1 of Oz-story Aloud to My Kids

Oz-story Magazine ran for six years, collecting a mix of archival and original Oz and Oz-adjacent fiction and comic strips. It was published by Hungry Tiger Press, with editing by Hungry Tiger publisher David Maxine and art direction by his partner, Eric Shanower. It contains a number of pieces of Oz short fiction you can't find elsewhere, so I decided to incorporate it into the Oz books I've been reading my kids. Even though it's called a magazine, it's bound like a book and runs 128 pages and even has an ISBN.

Oz-story Magazine, Number One
edited by David Maxine
art director: Eric Shanower

Anthology published: 1995
Contents originally published: 1906-95
Acquired and read aloud: September 2025

The first issue contained four short stories that I read aloud to my kids. The first was "Percy and the Shrinking Violets" by Rachel Cosgrove Payes; this brings back Percy the giant white rat from her novels The Hidden Valley and Wicked Witch of Oz. Unfortunately, even though it was just over a year ago that we read these books, my seven-year-old did not remember Percy at all! The story, where Percy—and then later, Ozma—is shrunk by a magical violet is fun enough, though one feels like Ozma and Percy are a little slow on the uptake at times.

Before Ruth Plumly Thompson became an Oz writer, she published short tales of a kingdom called Pumperdink, which she revealed in Kabumpo in Oz was actually in the Gillikin Country. This volume collects one of those older stories, "The Dragon of Pumperdink," a fun story about a dragon running out of coal (Thompson's dragons die if their internal flame dies out) who needs to seek employment.

The longest short story in the book (I serialized it over three nights) is "Gugu and the Kalidahs" by Eric Shanower. This brings back Gugu the leopard from The Magic of Oz—given we read this back when my kid was three, no way did they remember Gugu! Thankfully, Kalidahs were memorable from their recent experiences of various adaptations of the original book (both the Shanower/Oz comic and the Yoto audio adaptation have gotten recent play), because otherwise there are no familiar Oz characters. The story is about how Gugu's forest gets invaded by Kalidahs, in violation of ancient treaty. and Gugu must do his best to push them out... alone. It's a tense, dark story; it's been a long time since I read The Jungle Book, but it felt like an Oz refraction of Kipling. The illustrations are not in Shanower's usual style, but they are striking.

Lastly, there's "The Balloon-Girl of Oz," credited to Stephen Kane, but actually by Eric Shanower. This focuses on my kids' eternal favorite, Scraps the Patchwork Girl, who here swells up like a balloon, and has to desperately make her way back to the Emerald City for help without floating off into space. I always like Oz stories that put the characters in a weird situation they must think through logically in order to solve, and of course pictures of Scraps looking like a balloon are going to be delightful. My kids were very much into the absurdity of this one. I particularly liked the ending, where Scraps gets to mad at all the people laughing at how funny she looks, so she just lets go and floats off into the sky!

In addition to all this, there's a couple comics; I read "The Pathetic Losers of Oz" by Ed Brubaker, about all the Oz residents with powers not worth mentioning. I did not read Walt Sprouse's comic adaptation of The Marvelous Land of Oz, but my comics-loving seven-year-old did.

Additionally, there's two stories I didn't read to the kids. One is a nice little piece of literary fiction by F. Scott Fitzgerald, "Outside the Cabinet-Makers," which mentions Mombi, so I guess Fitzgerald was a fan!

The other is a complete novel (over fifty pages of small type) by L. Frank Baum from 1906: Sam Steele's Adventures on Land and Sea, or The Boy Fortune Hunters in Alaska. This I read to myself after reading everything aloud to the kids. I think I made the right call there, I don't think they would have been into it, but I actually found it surprisingly fun, a boy's-own adventure about an orphan boy to enters into a partnership with his late father's business partner to hunt for gold in Alaska, but ends up finding a whole different adventure instead. (As David Maxine points out in the intro, despite the subtitle, there's only one boy fortune hunter and they never make it to Alaska!) Baum is good at putting people into tough situations they must work they way out of. Maybe once we get through all the issues of Oz-story, I'll seek out the other Sam Steele novels. (The novel was not illustrated originally, but cleverly, Shanower selects a bunch of John R. Neill illustrations from various other projects that work perfectly well; you never would have guessed!)

Reading The Living House of Oz Aloud to My Kids

Having enjoyed Paradox in Oz, my kids and I went straight on to Edward Einhorn's other Oz novel, The Living House of Oz. This is a sequel in that sense that it follows up some characters and situations from the earlier book: just like in Paradox, a bit of the action takes place in Tonsoria; Tempus the Parrot-Ox puts in a brief appearance; one of the characters comes from the same dark, alternate Oz that Ozma journeyed to in Paradox. But it's not a sequel in the sense that it's the same thing again. Einhorn isn't invested in solving Oz continuity discrepancies this time (not that he was particularly interested in doing so the first time around, to be honest... though he does explain one discrepancy he didn't squeeze into Paradox).

The Living House of Oz by Edward Einhorn
illustrated by Eric Shanower

Published: 2005
Acquired: July 2023
Read aloud: August–September 2025

Here, he's interested in doing two things, I would say. The first is providing a "traditional" Oz quest story in the mold of Patchwork Girl, Rinkitink, or, of course, Wonderful Wizard: in order to protect and/or return to their family, a child protagonist is forced to set out on a dangerous journey. The main character here is Buddy, who lives in the mysterious Living House, where every piece of furniture is alive... and so is the house itself! He lives with his mother, a sorceress, and like many young protagonists, yearns for adventure.

The second thing Einhorn is up to here is interrogating some aspects of Oz; specifically, Ozma's ban on magic practiced by anyone other than herself, the Wizard, and Glinda. Is this actually just? Is it right to ban people from doing the thing they're good at because it might hurt other people? Einhorn follows up various aspects of several of Baum's Oz books, most notably Emerald City (the Phanfasms reappear), Patchwork Girl (the little-used Emerald City jail and its mistress, Tollydiggle), and Glinda (the Flatheads and the Adepts at Magic). This kind of thing can feel gratuitous in the hands of later authors, but because it's all in service of one central idea, the return appearances by stuff from earlier books feel quite organic.

Like Paradox, the book has two sub-adventures, but I thought that structure worked a bit better here. In the first, the Living House comes to Tonsoria, in the Gillikin Country. Buddy goes out to explore, but ends up kidnapped when he's at the wrong place at the wrong time, along with Ayala, the princess of Tonsoria (who was a minor character in Paradox). He works to free himself while his mother, Mordra, also works to free him. It turns out that in Tonsoria, there's a guy who really like making wigs, but people in Tonsoria like doing their own hair, and so he thinks if he kidnaps the ruler, he can force everyone to wear his wigs. It's goofy but fun; Tonsoria, with its squabbling advisors and cute animal (the flutefly) has a touch of the Ruth Plumly Thompson about it (in a good way), but the whole adventure also reminded me of John R. Neill's Oz novels. Though they were never great, what I liked about Neill's Oz novels (particularly Wonder City and Scalawagons) is that I think they capture what living in Oz must be like. It's just nuts, weird things are happening all the time. Einhorn does the same thing here. Sure, the cranky old man who owns a wig factory is going around kidnapping people? Why not? It provides a bit of diversion. Will he be punished? Well, not much, and not if he says he's sorry, because people need to learn from their mistakes. And besides, life in Oz would be dull if things like this didn't happen.

This half is basically just an excuse for the second half, though. With Mordra drawn out of the Living House, she attracts the attention of Glinda, and is taken back to the Emerald City for trial. Buddy, though, thinks Ozma is likely to treat his mother unfairly, and so sets out on a quest to rescue her, with several misadventures on the way; this culminates in a reveal of Buddy's true parentage and a moment of supreme temptation for Buddy, who must learn to do the right thing. More than any Oz author other than Eloise McGraw, I would say, Einhorn is interested in the psychology of his child protagonist. The entire book hinges not just on an act of heroism by him, but him learning how the world works. It's a great moment, very well done.

Other than that, the second half of the book is just full of nice touches. More than most of Baum's imitators, Einhorn has a great sense of humor, with inspired jokes. I particularly liked the Flathead whose head is so full of information about carpentry, he doesn't know any words that begin with X, Y, or Z, so he has to contort his sentences around saying you and your. But he also can't say extra... because he's not a very good speller! The trial of Mordra is also hilarious; the Scarecrow is assigned as prosecution... but they decide it's unfair to Modra if her defense lawyer is less smart, so he also serves in that role, arguing against himself. They're the kind of jokes one could imagine Baum writing, but he never did.

My kids particularly loved the Earl of Haberdashery, the living hatstand in the Living House, who occasionally accompanies Buddy on his adventures, and is always telling lies about things he knows and places he's been and deed he's accomplished. He's the kind of delightful, kooky character who fits right alongside all the other weirdos of Oz without feeling derivative of them. And it all pays off with an amazing moment in the end where he comes through when it's clutch.

Plus, we have of course excellent illustrations from our man, Eric Shanower. Overall, this is an excellently done Oz book; had it been one of the "Famous Forty" it surely would have been in my top ten at least. I liked Paradox a lot, but this beats it for me. I'd happily read more Edward Einhorn (I gather he has a couple short stories, which hopefully we'll come to), but it's been twenty years since this book, so perhaps he's said all he has to say about the world of Oz.

Reading Paradox in Oz Aloud to My Kids

My randomizer brings me and my seven-year-old to our next apocryphal Oz book—Paradox in Oz. I know I read this before at some point, but I didn't own it until my sister bought it for me as a present a couple years ago (along with the sequel, The Living House of Oz), and it doesn't appear on my my reading list, which goes back to September 2003, so I must have borrowed it from the library when I was in high school.

Paradox in Oz by Edward Einhorn
illustrated by Eric Shanower

Originally published: 1999
Previously read: early 2000s?
Acquired: July 2023
Read aloud: July–August 2025

The big selling point of Paradox in Oz is that it promises to reconcile disparate elements of Oz continuity. This is a good selling point, sure, but the thing that makes it a good book is that this isn't really the focus. The focus is on fun Oz adventures... but ones of a different sort than you've read before.

One of the things that's interested me about rereading the Oz books as an adult is that there are a lot of elements in them that respond very directly to the historical forces and pop culture of the time they were written... but if you read them as a kid, this is largely invisible to you, because the books are a fantasy world and/or vaguely old-fashioned. For example, L. Frank Baum wrote two different novels about demagogues stirring up previously peaceful groups on a warlike footing during World War I. As a kid, that connection would have never occurred to me. Along similar but not identical lines, Ruth Plumly Thompson's novels often take contemporary pop culture as a jumping-off point; she has two different novels that riff on Hitchcock thrillers, for example. I think not only is this invisible to Oz readers, but it's also often invisible to Oz writers. Many of the post–Famous Forty pastiche writers focus, I think, on recapturing Oz as it was written c. 1900-20, seemingly not realizing that if Baum (or Thompson, or whomever) had continued writing Oz novels up to the 1990s that wouldn't just been doing the same thing over and over again, essentially pastiching themselves, but continually refracting what was going on around them through an Oz lens.

All of this is leading up to me saying that if someone wrote an Oz book now, it would incorporate contemporary culture just as Baum and Thompson did, and in the 2020s, that would be complicated stories of time travel and the multiverse... and in 1999, Edward Einhorn did just that. In Paradox in Oz, the anti-aging enchantment ceases working, and Ozma must travel back in time in order to figure out what the issue is, only she inadvertently changes history, resulting in a new timeline where Oz is a dystopia ruled by a tyrannical Wizard. The book has stuff in it like Ozma doubling back on herself again and again, and Ozma seeing into the cracks in the "Ozziverse" as it starts to collapse around her. For my kids, they know this stuff so well from pop culture that the seven-year-old was predicting turns of events! Einhorn threads the needle of doing something new and fun, while still keeping it recognizable Ozzy. There are no other Oz books about time travel... but he perfectly nails how to write one.

My kids and I particularly enjoyed Tempus, the titular "parrot-ox," who can only do impossible things. (These include being born; they are half-parrot, half-ox, but there are no parrots in Oz!) He says lots of crazy stuff which makes a weird sort of sense. (My favorite paradox, though, was probably the barber who can't cut his own hair nor let anyone else cut it.) The trip to the "dark Oz" is good without going too far; the only complaint I have about it is that it 1) it kinds of peters out, Ozma just leaves, and 2) it seems to me to be a bit more exciting than the trip to Absurd City that follows it. Not that the trip to Absurd City is bad, but dark Oz is more interesting; this means the book has the same problem as Star Trek III or Doctor Who's "The Runaway Bride," in that the most exciting part of the story is done with only halfway in, meaning everything that follows is mildly anticlimactic even when it's well done. The encounter with Tip and Mombi in the past is also interesting, and delves into an area many Oz writers have not done a lot with. I liked Dr. Majestico, and I wish we had seen more of him. (I gather there's a short story Einhorn wrote with him; I'll have to seek it out.)

As for the continuity issues—Paradox both does and does not explain them. Early in the book, Ozma summons a parrot-ox by thinking of a paradox; in this case, that in Marvelous Land she knew what a horse looked like but in Dorothy and the Wizard, a horse came to Oz for the first time. The book doesn't explain this so much as just draw attention to the fact that this kind of thing happens in Oz a lot: is the Munchkin Country in the East or the West? do people in Oz use money or not? You get different answers to these questions depending on when you ask them. But the novel also indicates that 1) Oz history is changing all the time, and 2) there are many other Ozzes. So any continuity error you think of might be answered in any one of these ways. The book also provides an explanation for why people don't age or die in Oz, when this didn't seem to be the case in early books. (It's somewhat complicated, and has to work around how come the Tin Woodman didn't die when he chopped himself up; it also doesn't totally fit with some evidence here and there that would indicate aging stopped quite some time ago... but the great thing about the book is that it provides for itself an explanation for why its explanations aren't totally consistent!) In some cases, Einhorn doesn't explain so much as just poke fun at, such as when Ozma thinks about what a stupid name "Wantowin Battles" is.

Eric Shanower's illustrations are, of course, as great as always. Tempus is great, and so are all the images we see of the dark Oz. I did think he somewhat fell short capturing the visual anarchy of Absurd City; Einhorn does his best to render a bunch of visual paradoxes in prose, but I wanted the pictures to give us more of these than it did. (It was interesting to realize my kids' understanding of perspective isn't far enough along for them to understand why an M. C. Escher illustration doesn't make any sense.)

Probably the thing that makes Paradox work more than anything else is that, like the other good writers of Oz continuations, Einhorn is an author who happens to be writing an Oz book (e.g., Eloise McGraw, Sherwood Smith), rather than someone who's just writing an Oz book (e.g., Dick Martin, Gina Wickwar). The book is lively and thoughtful and well-constructed.